


just looking

by pinkmagnolias



Category: Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts (Cartoon)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, HEY HEY LOOK HERE, Mentioned Dr. Emilia (Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts), Mentioned Fun Gus (Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts), benson and dave are both mentioned too but only for one line, emilia and gus are like. Basically worthy of character roles they're talked about so often, i call this, i watched the final episode and couldn't get this idea out of my head, literally this fic is like one big spoiler don't read if you haven't watched everything yet, not actually knowing if this qualifies as a character study, oh SPOILERS for the finale, oh and hugo, there are spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-19
Updated: 2020-11-19
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:20:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27636055
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pinkmagnolias/pseuds/pinkmagnolias
Summary: Sometimes Kipo goes and stands over the burrow.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 41





	just looking

**Author's Note:**

> in case you didn't read the tags then this fic contains spoilers for Age of the Wonderbeasts!! you probably need to watch that first to understand this and you definitely need to watch it first if you don't want spoilers!!

Sometimes Kipo goes and stands over the burrow. Just looking.

They’d all considered remodeling the buildings around it, but eventually decided against. The official reason was to “honor their history before they all came together,” but mostly no one really wanted to get near enough to the burrow to build around it, or to make that area a public place and chance someone getting trapped with Gus. So they left it.

But sometimes, every now and then, Kipo will go down and stand—or sit, though she doesn’t usually stay long enough for that—on the ledge where Emilia had fallen.

She doesn’t know what she’s looking for, if anything. 

Well.

Whenever she goes, she scans for any sign of Emilia. A human-shaped impression in the fungus, a limb uncovered, a snatch of her voice. She never finds anything, but it’s almost habit to look.

So she guesses a better thing to say is that she doesn’t know what she’s hoping for.

Because she truly doesn’t. That Emilia will be there, reformed and somehow free from Fun Gus, waiting for Kipo to pull her out and into civilization? 

That’s too implausible for even Kipo to hope for (though she can’t say she hasn’t imagined it a few times).

She doesn’t know why she goes there, either. It’s not like she gets anything out of it.

At one point, after she’d already visited a dozen odd times, she tried talking to Emilia. She knew she couldn’t hear her, but Hugo also couldn’t hear her, and that didn’t stop her from talking to him. It was cathartic. 

Talking to Emilia meant talking to Fun Gus, too, though, and he actually _could_ hear her, rising up to see who was talking barely a sentence in. And so then Kipo had to run before he saw her and tried to keep her, and after that she hadn’t been brave enough to go back for a few months, much less try to talk to Emilia again.

So all she does whenever she goes is just stand there, looking into the burrow.

Sometimes she spins around and marches away a second after entering. More often, she’ll stand for a minute or two before leaving. One time, she’d stayed there for nearly an hour, until Wolf had found her and pulled her away.

Kipo thinks Wolf is the only one who knows she goes there. She’s not sure how obvious she is about it. But she thinks Wolf is the only one who knows. Wolf’s the only one she’s _told_ , anyway.

After Wolf had dragged her away from the burrow, she’d asked, solemnly but not judgmentally, what Kipo had been thinking.

Kipo hadn’t really known the answer to that.

She still doesn’t really know the answer to that.

So instead she’d told her about how she goes there sometimes, to think. Just looking.

Wolf had squinted, reminded her they couldn’t risk interacting with Fun Gus again, much less Emilia.

Kipo’d agreed, then blatantly switched topics to the picnic with Benson and Dave they were planning for that afternoon. Wolf had let her.

That was the only time she’d ever talked about it. Which is okay with her! That makes it feel like… not really a secret, but something private. Separate from the rest of the world. Quiet, in a way.

It’s nice.

And maybe she shouldn’t call visiting a maniac bent on exterminating mutes and a fungus that wants to trap anyone who visits forever _nice_ , but the feeling of something that’s just Kipo’s, something that she couldn’t share if she wanted, because no one else _knows_ —well, except Wolf, but Wolf hadn’t said or done anything about it past the one interaction—that’s nice.

That’s really the only nice thing about it, though. A lot of times she’ll leave the burrow feeling a little empty, if she hadn’t already _come_ feeling that way. And again, she doesn’t really get anything out of it. She doesn’t know why she goes.

But she does; retracing the route she’s followed time after time before, until she’s standing on a ledge above the burrow. Just looking.


End file.
